“What do I want people to see when they see my paintings? Picture me in a small boat far out at sea. With no oars, no sail, and no idea where I am. But I have a small lantern and I hold it up in the middle of this sea of darkness, hoping someone will see it and come find my boat. You could say that my paintings are that lantern.”
Francisco Franklin was born in Tucson, and raised in a remote part of Sonora, Mexico, between Caborca and the coastal Seri village of El Desemboque.
What started as a young man’s escape hatch evolved into a lifetime dedication to craft. With no formal training, Franklin used his will and creativity to hone and sharpen his work. “I use feeling and color to replace my deficiencies in technique.”
Following employment and military service, Franklin spent time across Europe with stays in Stockholm, Germany, South of France, and Iceland. It was during this period that he passed through various art circles leading Franklin to learn the imperative truth that creating, for him, was a totally solitary occupation. “Whatever ability I have, I had to really really fight for it.”
“Hopefully I am some kind of witness to the world.”
While living and working in New York City a chance encounter with a stranger sparked the idea that would go on to define Franklin’s creative expression: “You don’t have to make anything extraordinary, you just have the make the ordinary extraordinary. My whole thing with painting changed after that. I never struggled with the idea that I have to come up with something nobody had seen or heard before. It changed my life.”
Channeling imagery from his childhood and celebrating Southwestern border culture, the colorful and bespoke creations are born from a lifetime of careful observation, devotion, and the peaks & valleys between. “All of my life I have painted, to the best of my ability, my heart’s desire of how I would like things to be.”
Francisco Franklin’s work includes oil paintings, stone carvings, murals, and woodwork; using whatever medium necessary to communicate. “To make a lot with very little. I think of myself as a bricklayer or a welder. I am more inclined to relate to those people.”
